


Scream (Till You're Hoarse)

by Zaffie



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: And Everyone Sure Has Spiffy Pyjamas In The Middle Of The Night, But Fitz Is There To Help, Gen, I'm Too Tired For Proper Tagging, Skye And Fitz Tackle All The Problems, Skye Is Feeling Angsty, Skye's Having Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 11:10:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3486014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaffie/pseuds/Zaffie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Skye's first night out of quarantine and she's not quite back to normal. Everyone else seems pretty on edge, too.</p><p>One-shot taking place after 2x11. Spoilers for 2x11, duh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scream (Till You're Hoarse)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure that I'm quite satisfied with this one. Probably because I had half of it in my head last night, and then when I was asleep evil gremlins stole it out of my brain through my ear or something. I've been trying to recapture it today and haven't had much luck, which is making me cranky. Besides it's late and I'm tired, so I'll post now and reread to make my final decisions later. In the meantime, why don't you all tell me what you think?

Skye wakes up screaming and she doesn’t know why.

     Before she has time to catch her breath, half a dozen semi-dressed agents burst into the room and spread out, searching for danger. Someone switches on the light.

     Skye, who is still half-asleep, squints her eyes against the brightness. Her hair is fluffed out in a cloud, thick and tangled, and she reaches both hands up to push it away from her face. She’s breathing fast and her throat feels raw. Her heart is beating so fast that it doesn’t feel like individual beats anymore – just a single humming vibration in her chest and neck and head.

     “What happened?” May says, but she’s already scanned the room and ascertained that there’s no obvious danger. She’s still tense, though, like May always is, with smoothed back hair and a zipped up black jacket. Skye doesn’t know if May even sleeps.

     “Nothing. I’m sorry,” Skye tells them all. Beneath the blankets, she clenches her fists so that her fingernails bite into her palms. She’s in control. This is fine. It’s no big deal.

     Bobbi yawns and puts up a hand to cover her mouth. She’s wearing a singlet and a pair of too-big sweatpants. Hunter, standing beside her in his boxer shorts, is eyeing the sweatpants with some resentment. Skye wonders if there’s a story there. She tries to think about that, and not the sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades, or the pounding in her temples.

     “Probably just stress,” Jemma says, forcing false cheer into her voice. She comes and sits down on the edge of Skye’s bed. “You can’t have been sleeping well.”

     “I’m sorry,” Skye repeats. “You didn’t all have to come… running.” Even Mack is there, lurking in the shadows outside the door with his huge arms crossed over his bare chest. He looks surprisingly stoic in a pair of pale blue shorts. Skye doesn’t know why he’s here. After the last outburst, she’d gotten the impression that he didn’t like her very much.

     “Don’t apologise,” May says.

     Hunter yawns, then, and stretches his arms over his head. “Ah, well. Back to bed,” he mutters, turns and leaves.

     “Goodnight, then,” Bobbi agrees. She smiles at Skye, and walks down the corridor in the opposite direction to Hunter. When she passes Mack she touches his shoulder companionably, trails a hand down his arm, and he scowls and follows her.

     “I’m fine,” Skye says, when no one else looks like they want to leave. “Really. You can… go.”

     May’s lips twitch just a little when she checks, “You’re _sure_ everything’s okay?”

     “Positive,” Skye says. She wants them to leave. She needs them to leave. When they’re here, she’s terrified.

     Jemma pats Skye’s leg through the blankets. She has plaid pyjamas – a matching set, button-down shirt and bottoms – and her hair is in two short plaits. Before, Skye probably would have made some comment about how cute Jemma is. They would have stayed up together, talking; about Trip, about Skye’s problem, about anything and everything that struck their fancy.

     It’s not like that anymore. Skye wonders which one of them has changed the most.

     “Try and sleep,” Jemma encourages. “It will be better in the morning.”

     It won’t, Skye wants to say. She doesn’t have to worry about nightmares. The nightmare is her life.

     She thinks that sounds too pessimistic and melodramatic. Instead, she says, “Thanks, Simmons. Night,” and she tries to smile.

     Jemma stands up and she and May both move to the door. Jemma pauses to say, “I have something you can take, if you like. To help you sleep.”

     Skye shakes her head. “It’s fine. I’m not the only one who can’t sleep.”

     May’s already gone, melting back to whatever she was doing before. Training, probably, or trying to talk things out with Coulson. May has a lot on her plate. She’s propping the rest of them up when they can’t manage on their own.

     “Light on or off?” Jemma checks, her hand on the switch.

     “Off,” Skye says.

     The room goes black. She hears the door click shut when Jemma leaves and then she presses her fists to her mouth, trying to muffle her breathing when it gets fast, and hard, and loud. It swells inside her, a feeling like screaming, like wanting to scream as loud as she can and never stop. There’s a pressure building in her head and she makes a pained, muffled sound; can’t help it. She presses her knuckles harder against her mouth. There’s panic filling her throat, closing it tight.

     The door opens a little bit. A crack of light spills through, illuminating Fitz’s face and casting shadows over his eyes and the hollows in his cheeks.

     “Did I miss the party?” he asks.

     Skye feels her shoulders relax, slumping into the mattress. “Hi,” she says.

     “What was everyone doing in here?” He crosses the room and crouches by the side of the bed. “Are you okay?”

     He’s not asking in the same way that everyone else asked. He’s asking because he _knows_ , and it makes Skye feel… safer. She doesn’t have to worry about Fitz finding out her secret. Not a second time.

     “I had a nightmare,” she says. “I guess it was loud.”

     “Oh, is that what the noise was? I thought it was, uh…” he trails off, and scrunches his face up when he tries to capture the word. Skye waits, but Fitz gives up after a few seconds. “Anyway,” he says.

     “I’m scared I’m going to kill you all,” Skye says, suddenly.

     Oh. Huh. She hadn’t known she was going to say that. It had just – rushed out.

     “Okay.” Fitz sits down on the floor, crosses his legs and cradles his bad hand in his lap. It’s an invitation to talk, and Skye wants to.

     “I don’t – I don’t know what I’m _doing_. I don’t even properly understand what happens to me, and Jemma keeps saying – it’s an epidemic? And maybe I’m contagious? – and I don’t know if she’s right, or why I’m not… you know, like Raina. It’s driving me insane, not knowing. I want to tell people. I want to ask Coulson for help, or Jemma, or May, or _someone_ , because one of them must know more than me, Fitz. There has to be someone who knows what I’m meant to do next.” She runs out of air, stops to breathe and realises she doesn’t even know what else to say. How’s that for a perfect example of her problem.

     “All you’ve done so far is explode one, ah-”

     “Lamp.”

     “Lamp, yeah. It wasn’t a very big explosion,” Fitz says soothingly.

     “But I didn’t _mean_ for it to happen.”

     “You said that when everyone was arguing, you kept it under control.”

     “Well, I think so – I mean, just barely, but-”

     “So why are you worried?” He sounds like it’s totally unreasonable for her to be anxious.

     “What if I can’t control it next time? What if I destroy the universe or something?”

     Fitz snorts. Skye’s tired. It’s even starting to sound silly to her, now.

     “You know what I mean,” she says. She’s exhausted. Her eyes sting.

     Fitz says something else, but Skye’s not listening to him. She’s shifted a little on the pillow, and it’s ridiculous, how comfortable she is right now. Her whole body is relaxing. Her heart is back to normal, and she can breathe again, and she’s not – well, she’s just _not_.

     “Are you awake?” Fitz asks. His hand hovers over her shoulder, and then he pats it, a little awkwardly.

     “Yeah,” Skye says. It’s hard to get the word out.

     “Should I go?”

     She shakes her head and rolls onto her side. “Please don’t.” Skye forces her eyes open, so that she can look at Fitz. “Please don’t go.”

     “I think it’s going to be okay,” he tells her. “Because, ah…”

     He’s lost the words again, but Skye doesn’t care. Just wait here for a little while, she thinks, but she can’t make her mouth work to say the words out loud. Her eyelids are drooping. It feels like an adrenaline crash, maybe, or maybe she was just tired. Jemma’s right, she hasn’t been sleeping enough. Neither has Coulson. Someone should go and tell Coulson to sleep.

     Skye yawns. Fitz catches it, and yawns too. “You worry too much,” he tells her. “When you worry about things, they’re bad. When you stop worrying, then everything just, um, well, it stops.”

     “Hm?” Skye mumbles.

     Fitz touches her shoulder again. “Stops being bad. It’s, uh, it’s not bad.”

     Skye nods, even though she’s not sure what they’re talking about anymore. She sinks her head into the pillow and she thinks that Fitz keeps talking, although she’s not sure what he’s saying. She likes to listen to his accent, though. It’s soothing, like lullabies, or something. Maybe she should ask Fitz to sing her lullabies. Can Fitz sing? She should find out. Jemma will know. Jemma will know… what? Something about singing.

 

When Skye wakes up, Fitz is gone.

     That’s probably a good thing, because it would be weird if he was sleeping on the floor, or something. That definitely crosses some sort of line.

     It’s the first normal thought Skye’s had in days. She smiles, a little bit, and sits up. Her hair sticks out around her head like someone’s been electrocuting her in the night, but Skye has more important things to think about now. Like making it through another day without hurting her friends or spilling her secrets. Like finding Raina, and learning what she knows. Things like Trip. That’s what she has to think about.

     Although, really, her hair is so big it’s making her face look tiny, like a shrunken head or something, and it’s probably not a big deal if she spends ten minutes in the bathroom trying to flatten it before breakfast, right?


End file.
